Why I Write by Rinita Mazumdar
A blog series preview of her forthcoming book “Unspoken Hindu Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing.”
A Story of Shambho and Sisyphus: Exclusion, Agony and Our Journey
I write to heal and as a feminist (which is about justice for all, not just one gender, one race, one ethnicity, etc). I believe the personal is the political, so as I heal, the community also heals, for the difference between the Self and the “other”, the boundaries are both artificial as well as porous. My healing process is not linear, as in standard therapy, but a continuous and cyclic process, that involves a lot of “others”, histories, locations, memories, pain, and suffering. This collective memory, which are painful, also give us (me) a sense of empowerment.
As I start this blog in December and as I believe, the personal is deeply and inherent, political, I will mention an trauma/memory that is political, nonetheless, for me a story about the journey of an immigrant and her alienation, isolation, search, and identity. I start with one such memory of the Mumbai terror attack on November 26, 2008.
On this same day 15 years ago, Mumbai, India’s Western Metropolis was under terrorist attack. For most of those us who were born and raised in India, this was a hard day being so far and seeing visual image of the majestic Taj Hotel by the beautiful Sea, was a feeling of profound sadness and horror.
When I visited the Elephanta Caves in 2019 by taking a ferry ride from the front of the Taj, those memories came back and I stood by the Taj, part of which is beyond repair now silently thinking of how the people and the Nation passed through this trauma. This writing, however, is not about the day of horror in Mumbai, but about my own experience when that news reached us here across oceans and mountains. All our experiences happen in a social context, and all our experience have specific meaning for each of us, these are the stories that build the entire fabric of our lives. I was all alone in my apartment, after having picked up my daughter from school and dropping her off to her father’s house. It was past midnight in India, so I did not call anyone (they live in Calcutta, which is East Coast). I was going through the messages and the images. I felt shocked and somewhat helpless, thinking, how can I be with those people, who share my history and identity. One of my Filipina friends called and we talked about this a bit and she did not seem surprised as “it has become normal”. There was a feeling of uneasiness on my part, I did not know, rather I could not NAME the feeling till 2015, when the Paris attack happened.
Paris Attack
The Paris attack also happened in November and my daughter had left for Boston to her new College, and I was dealing with the separation and was trying to cope when the news of the Paris attacks came. As I opened my social media and the email, I could see support and condolences pouring out for our French co worker. I too sent her condolences. I returned home and sat with a cup of coffee and slowly, the old pain of Mumbai attack came back. It was gnawing, it was different.
Naming Pain
For now, I could NAME the pain. I knew, as an Indian and a Hindu, whose civilization was under attacked precisely for what they are, that none of the support and the condolences that poured in for the French citizen came for me. I realized that I am an outsider to this Western, Abrahamic Club. It was then that I could NAME the pain on the day of the Mumbai attack, it was social exclusion. Literature of Grief counseling show that one recovers from grief, in time and through active healing and reconnecting. It is this sense of not being able to connect, of no one reaching out, of no one even interested in “Terror attack in those nations, those cultures”, from which my lonely-ness came.
Years later during Pandemic, when I had to cancel my flight to India I had the same feeling, when people joked about cremation and how “corpses were burnt”. Social exclusion starts at birth, the othering of some, carries on in life till death, or as in some cultures, like mine, beyond next to the next life, and cycles back…
I come from a culture where both the Sruti (hearing) and Smriti (memory) play big roles in knowledge production. Indeed, our memories recycle back, they say, in grief every anniversary. Like Shiva destroys and then cycles back to a new creation, our civilization was traumatized and then healed, dancing to the tune of Shiva, never giving up, never ending, only transforming.
For all loss like energy it never goes away but transforms and acquires a new form. And those of us, who are excluded, carry on our cyclic journey, like Sisyphus or Krishna’s son Shambo (Samba, the last “a” is undertone) excluded for his disease but steadfast in his journey… waiting to be healed from our leprosy of exclusion (all lepers are excluded) by the Sunshine……).
Shiva’s Dance in Albuquerque
Rinita Mazumdar, Ph.D. is one of the leading feminist scholars in the Southwest. Originally from India, Dr. Mazumdar earned her Masters from India and Canada in Philosophy and MSc in Psychology from the University of Phoenix. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Find her poetry collection, “Shiva’s Dance in Albuquerque” by clicking here.
Subscribe today for updates, giveaways, discounts and more from your source for independent media from viewpoints as diverse as the backgrounds of our creative contributors.
